Unlike what Ferrari and the other teams could have expected, the start of the race turned out to be wet. Initially, most drivers chose the Soft tires for the start, primarily due to the relatively cool track temperatures, which could have made it challenging to warm up the harder tires in the early laps. That being said, there wasn’t a significant difference between the C2 and C3 compounds in Friday’s practice sessions.
With this in mind, there were several downpours at the start of the race in the finish line and the last sector. Perez and Leclerc were the first to pit. At the end of the second lap, the gap between the two, who were initially separated by about a second, had increased to nearly 20 seconds. Leclerc’s call to switch to the Intermediate tire was quite late, but it could have been the correct choice, as track conditions worsened between the second and third laps. The image below shows the situation at that time, with Perez and Leclerc being the first to consider the Intermediate option.
However, Ferrari was not prepared and lost valuable seconds during the pit stop. With subsequent pit stops from their competitors, the Ferrari driver found himself in fifth place, but due to contact, he broke the right endplate of the front wing. This caused even more understeer than before. Leclerc mentioned losing over 60 points of vertical load due to this damage.
Gasly found himself in a strong position on the leaderboard as he was the first to switch to Intermediates along with the other two mentioned earlier. Alonso skillfully used the wet track conditions and then copied Verstappen’s strategy.
From the 10th lap onwards, those who had not pitted and stuck with the Soft tires began setting competitive lap times again, resulting in a crossover moment. The track dried out, and the Soft tires became the preferable choice. On the 11th lap, Sainz, Alonso, and Norris pitted, while on the subsequent lap, Verstappen, Gasly, and Leclerc pitted.
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Charles Leclerc had a slow second pit stop due to wing replacement and re-entered in 12th place. While Leclerc was a lap behind the “ideal” lap, Ferrari split their strategies to avoid both drivers getting caught in case of rain. They would have probably been better off swapping strategies between Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, as the Monegasque was clearly struggling with the handling of his car. An ideal double pit stop on lap 11 would have been great, but the drivers had a 2.3s gap, and the team decided not to risk this delicate operation.
In the Red Bull camp, Verstappen was advantaged by the second pit stop since Perez had initially gained a substantial advantage by stopping on the first lap. The Dutch driver re-entered early, effectively performing an overcut on his teammate. The comparison above shows the moment Verstappen switches from Intermediates to Softs and manages to gain up to 2 seconds per lap over his teammate.
Ferrari SF-23: Sainz anticipates pit stop to switch to used Soft tires
From this point onwards, the track briefly dried, and the track conditions were those on which Ferrari had based their setup in the preceding days. They opted for a lower-downforce rear wing to generate more straight-line speed. The pace was decent overall, though Carlos Sainz struggled to overtake Gasly’s Alpine.
In the chart above, we see the lap times of the first stint on slick tires after the rain. Charles Leclerc had additional issues with his car and did not finish the race. Max Verstappen was averaging around 0.6 seconds per lap faster than the second-fastest driver on the track, Alonso. Verstappen was even able to maintain an average of almost a second per lap over his teammate during this stint.
On the 43rd lap, Carlos Sainz returned to the pits to switch to another set of Soft tires, this time used, as he had exhausted the two sets of new tires he had preserved for the race. Attempting an undercut was difficult, given that Gasly’s lead was over 4 seconds, so Alpine did not cover Sainz’s Ferrari.
On the 48th lap, Gasly pitted, ending up behind the Spaniard but with fresher tires by 6 laps. Furthermore, Alonso, who pitted on the 49th lap, also had issues during his stop, allowing Sainz to reclaim a position over his compatriot from Aston Martin. However, Alonso was able to retake the position on the track shortly afterward.
Now, let’s take stock of what we’ve observed in dry conditions, considering the average lap times on slick tires. In this case, all the drivers under consideration used only the Soft tires.
Verstappen maintained a pace around 1:15.2, followed by his teammate Perez, who was approximately 0.3 seconds slower on average. The only driver who managed to stay close to the Red Bull was Alonso, who was just over 0.4 seconds behind the reigning champion on average. Speaking of Ferrari, in these conditions, they performed better than expected, managing to stay ahead of McLaren and Mercedes.
Dutch GP 2023: Ferrari SF-23 balanced but slow
In terms of pace, the drivers were quite similar, and Alonso managed to keep Hamilton behind in the final laps. Such a performance wasn’t expected, as they couldn’t get the high-downforce package to work over the weekend and had to adapt to the medium-high downforce setup. Below is a chart clearly depicting each team’s potential on the track today.
Mercedes and McLaren effectively squandered the weekend. The former made more mistakes in qualifying, especially with Lewis Hamilton, but they wouldn’t have had the pace to qualify ahead of the orange cars. The latter, however, ruined their chances in the early laps of the race and ended up at the back. While they had pace on the dry track, their lack of straight-line speed prevented them from making many overtakes. In terms of the teams’ strengths, Aston Martin was the second force today. Alpine was the third force, and Ferrari was fourth, followed immediately by Mercedes and McLaren. Below is the situation at the end of the race, shortly after the red flag.
With the arrival of rain, two further opportunities arose to climb up the ranks. The first opportunity came when switching from slicks to Intermediates, and then, when the rain increased, many drivers thought of switching from Intermediates to Full Wets. Timing the right lap is always challenging. Additionally, they could have considered skipping a stop and going straight to Full Wets. Verstappen made no mistakes and managed the advantage he had accumulated up to that point. In this case, making the move too early wasn’t a significant advantage, as the track was still partially dry, and the Soft tires were effective.
Source: Alessandro Arcari and Niccoló Arnerich for FUnoanalisitecnica
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